Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Hong Kong Polytechnic University

A Literature Review on

Enhancing Candidates’ Performance in

Oral English in Hong Kong Certificate of

English Language (Syllabus A) Examination

by

Seto Wood Hung Andy (04720055g)

Assignment Two

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

MAELT Secondary Language Teaching

(ENGL582_20041_A)

Department of English

Faculty of Arts

December 13, 2004

Glossary of Acronyms

HKCEE Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination

HKEAA Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority

I.  Introduction

The paper aims at summarizing, synthesizing, and evaluating selected literature on the teaching of spoken language vis-à-vis the common problems occurred in Oral English in the Certificate of Education English Language (Syllabus A) Examination. Section II outlines the focus and background of the study, the objectives and the research questions asked. Section III identifies the common problems occurred in Paper 4 Oral English in 2004. Section IV explores possible reasons for the problems. Section V states proposed recommendations for resolving the problems mentioned. Section VI critically reviews and evaluates selected literature in relation to the problems, possible solutions, and their relevance to my own teaching context. The body of literature includes distinctive features of oral English, problems in learning natural oral English, and possible ways to learn natural oral English more effectively. Section VII concludes the paper.

II.  The Issue to be Addressed

As stated in the examination report in 2004, the overall performance of the candidates taking Oral English was more or less the same as that of 2003 (HKEAA, 2004). In general, candidates performed better in Part A Role Play than in Part B Group Interaction. One possible reason is that candidates had been taught certain skills and strategies to initiate a conversation, to elicit and pass on information in a manner appropriate to the role based on the instructions and information provided (HKEAA, 2004). However, Part B required more spontaneity and genuine communication. Candidates could not simply reply on a few memorized formulaic expressions to carry out a meaningful discussion. The lack of communication skills and discussion techniques were regarded as the reasons for their poor performance (HKEAA, 2004). Language problems observed in 2004 were not new, many of which occurred repeatedly in the past four years (HKEAA, 2000; HKEAA, 2001; HKEAA, 2002; HKEAA, 2003). Despite HKEAA’s annual comments and recommendations, candidates did not seem to advance significantly in their ability in oral English. Obviously, these perennial problems are obstacles to enhancing candidates’ performance in Paper 4. Thus, the objective is to investigate the possible pedagogical strategies that may enhance candidates’ performance. The research question is: “What can be done in class to enable candidates to participate effectively in Oral English in Hong Kong Certification of Education English Language (Syllabus A) Examination?”

III.  Common Problems in Oral English Examination

In Part A of Oral English Examination, candidates are required to perform a task in a role play with two examiners based on instruction and information provided. Candidates need to initiate a conversation, to elicit, and to pass on information in a manner appropriate to the role. They are assessed on conversational strategies and overall fluency. In Part B, candidates are grouped together and presented with a situation and a task. Candidates need to express, to elicit, and to respond to ideas, opinions, and feelings through discussion. They may also need to seek and give clarification, sum up points discussed, and redirect the discussion. They are assessed on conversational strategies, overall fluency, and the contribution they make to the conversation. The emphasis is on communication effectiveness rather than on task completion (HKEAA, 2004).

It was reported in 2004 that the most prevalent problems found in candidates’ performance in Part A include mispronunciation of common words, poor intonation and phrasing, poor questioning techniques, lack of fluency, making grammatically incorrect questions, poor note-taking techniques, misunderstanding of Second Examiner’s questions, and missing out of key elements of information. Candidates were unable to ask the examiners for clarification appropriately when they did not understand the examiners or to rephrase the questions they asked when the examiners asked for clarification. The whole interview was carried out mechanically without much eye contact, proper ways of greeting people, and appropriate conversational strategies, making it more like a question and answer exercise than a genuine interview (HKEAA, 2004).

In Part B, most candidates simply took turns to give their opinions and strictly followed the guidelines given in the discussion topics without any real interaction. Ideas were rarely developed. There were often abrupt changes in subject matter. A lot of stock phrases like “I agree.”, “That’s a good idea.”, and “What do you think?” were used out of context. Grammatical mistakes and lack of vocabulary were also prevalent (HKEAA, 2004).

IV.  Possible Reasons for Those Common Problems

As many of the problems mentioned in HKEAA (2004) were found in previous examination reports (HKEAA, 2000; HKEAA 2001; HKEAA 2002; HKEAA 2003), they may have become ingrained. This is probably due to a lack of exposure to English in candidates’ daily life. They simply could not find the right ways to express themselves. Many did not understand what genuine communication in oral English is like in daily life, let alone the notions of various features of oral English, such as exchange structures, adjacency pairs, grammatical intricacy, minimal and non-minimal feedback tokens, and ellipsis. Another reason may be that teachers had not taught the basic skills and strategies for genuine communication.

V.  Proposed Recommendations for the Problems

HKEAA (2004) proposes that candidates need to learn the pronunciation, phrasing, and intonation. Candidates were recommended to practise correct pronunciation of vowels and consonants through minimal pairs exercises, to listen to good speakers of English on the radio and television, and to read newspapers and magazines. They need to learn and practise various conversational strategies including greeting people, asking for clarification, inviting opinions, responding to others, turn-taking, developing arguments, and leave-taking. They need to build up a good foundation in grammatical forms and structures as well as in listening skills and note-taking skills. Most important, it is proposed that candidates must use English in authentic situations whenever possible, like speaking English to classmates and teachers both inside and outside the classrooms as well as taking a more active part in debates, speech competitions, drama presentations, and other English-speaking activities (HKEAA, 2004).

VI.  Literature Review

Based on the common problems found in oral English, this section critically reviews and evaluates selected literature in relation to the distinctive features of oral English, the problems in learning natural oral English, and possible ways to learn natural oral English.

A. Distinctive Features of Oral English

The body of selected literature shows that oral English has distinctive features that distinguish it from written English. For example, oral English has its own structure (Silva Joyce & Slade, 2000) and grammar (Carter & MaCarthy, 1995). Four main grammatical features include ellipsis, left dislocation and topical information, reinforcement, and indirect speech (Carter & McCarthy, 1995). Though it has lower lexical density, it is no less structured and is highly organized than written English. Rather, oral English is dynamic and grammatically intricate (Halliday, 1989).

Spoken language serves both interactional and transactional functions (Brown & Yule, 1983; McCarthy, 1991, Silva Joyce & Slade, 2000). The former aims to establish roles and relationship with another person, confirm and consolidate relationship, or express solidarity while the latter get business done or produce some changes in a situation (McCarthy, 1991).

Some scholars define casual conversation as a combination of chunks and chat. In casual conversation, the chunks refer to those types of talks that have an identifiable generic structure while the chat does not, that makes the structure of the chunks more predictable (Eggins & Slade, 1997; Slade 1997; Silva Joyce & Slade, 2000). Chunk segments of talk are more monologically structured and less interactive than chat segments (Eggins & Slade, 1997; Slade, 1997; Silva Joyce & Slade, 2000). When analyzing chunks, it is found that there are four common storytelling texts, including narratives, recounts, anecdotes, and exempla. They have identifiable generic structures, are related to temporarily sequenced events, and make evaluations of the event depicted (Eggins & Slade, 1997; Slade, 1997; Silva Joyce & Slade, 2000).

Apart from these macro aspects of conversations, there are several micro aspects as discussed in conversation analysis, including adjacency pairs, follow-up moves, feedback tokens, transactions and topics, as well as turn taking and turn giving: (1) Adjacency pairs refer to pairs of utterances in talk that are mutually dependent. For instance, a question predicts an answer, and an answer presupposes a question (McCarthy, 1991). (2) Follow-up moves or discourse markers in information exchanges may include ‘how nice’, ‘that’s interesting’, ‘oh dear’, ‘how awful’, ‘lucky you’, ‘oh no’, ‘I see’, ‘did you’, ‘good’ and ‘right’ (McCarthy, 1991; McCarthy & Walsh, 2003). (3) Feedback tokens or backchannels are distinctive and carry different functions in sequences of talk. They are divided into minimal and non-minimal (McCarthy, 2002). The former may include ‘oh’, ‘yeah’, ‘right’, ‘okay’, ‘uh huh’, ‘mm hm’, ‘mm’, while the latter ‘really’ and ‘great’ (McCarthy, 1991; Gardner, 1994; Burns, 2001). (4) Transaction markers such as ‘right’, ‘now’, ‘so’, and ‘okay’ help divide various topics (McCarthy, 1991). In casual conversations, topics are being raised because people are chatting and want to keep the talk going (McCarthy, 1991; McCarthy & O’Keeffe, 2003). (5) Turn-taking patterns are used to negotiate and renegotiate conversational dialogue as well as to take on different roles in a dialogue (Burns, 2001). People take turns when they are selected or speak of their own accord (McCarthy, 1991; McCarthy M. & O’Keeffe, A., 2003). Speakers also predict one another’s utterances, either complete them for them or overlap with them when they complete (McCarthy, 1991). The looser the restrictions on what and when people may speak, the more naturally the turn-taking emerges (McCarthy, 1991).

The literature shows that there are many distinctive features of oral English. They may have to be carefully considered when teachers prepare candidates for the Oral English Examination.

B. Problems in Learning Natural Oral English

The problems in learning natural oral English may include the following. First, many existing teaching resources use scripted dialogues. They are problematic as they are based on the grammar of written English and do not consider the major features of spoken English as mentioned before (Silva Joyce & Slade, 2000). Descriptions of conversation that rest on written mode or on restricted spoken language may omit many common features of everyday conversation (Carter & McCarthy, 1995). One reason is that real spoken data is rare for teachers and students, and the imaginary dialogues of course books usually suffer from grammatical artificiality (Carter & McCarthy, 1995).

Second, students fail to open, close, and maintain conversations as they cannot manage the micro elements of conversation (Silva Joyce & Slade, 2000). Students who encounter only scripted spoken language in the classroom will have problems in handling unforeseeable interactions outside the classroom (Burns, 2001). Traditional classroom usually has very ordered turn-taking controlled by the teacher (McCarthy, 1991).

Third, language pedagogy fails to teach speaking skills as it ignores what is known about the spoken language and is based on models influenced by written language (McCarthy & Carter, 2001).

The literature shows that a lack of exposure to what genuine communication is like in daily life and a lack of pedagogical focus on teaching authentic spoken English contribute to the reasons for student unsatisfactory performance in oral English.

C. Possible Ways to Learn Natural Oral English

The following strategies may help resolve the problems mentioned. First, teachers may encourage students to practice aspects of casual conversation in English. Specifically constructed and simplified texts are inappropriate for teaching if they omit many of the features of real spoken discourse. Teachers may edit coursebook dialogues by adding small items to make them more natural (McCarthy & Walsh, 2003). Corpora may inform the pedagogical practices and benefit classroom teaching by raising students’ awareness of aspects of pragmatics and sociopragmatics (McKay, Bowyer, & Commins, 2000; Crandall & Basturkmen, 2004) and of how meanings and relationships are constructed through features like repetition, patterning, and speaking turns (McCarthy & Carter, 2001; Carter & McCarthy, 2004). The interactive features of topics can be taught and practiced, such as the use of opening markers like ‘by the way’, closing markers like ‘anyway’, and a summary and an evaluation of a talk, like ‘sound awful’ and ‘really’ (McCarthy, 1991). Lexical realizations of turn-taking management can be taught directly as well, like phrases for interrupting, for pre-planning one’s turn, and for closing (McCarthy, 1991; Basturkmen, 2001). Listening activities can raise students’ awareness of how speakers mark topic shifts when they use markers, change pitches, and make summaries and evaluations (McCarthy, 1991).

Second, as casual conversation has a consistent and describable structure, a more explicit approach to teaching the structure of casual conversation is essential. It enables students to explore the structure and features of casual talk and helps them participate in realistic social interactions (Slade, 1997; Silva Joyce & Slade, 2000). As the knowledge of text structure helps students develop both listening and speaking skills, such structures need to be considered when designing curriculum and materials for teaching conversation (Silva Joyce & Slade, 2000).

Third, it is proposed that the best course of action is to expose students to natural spoken data whenever possible and to help them become observers of the grammar of talk in its natural contexts and in different genres (Carter & McCarthy, 1995). It is important to design tasks that enable students to interact in contexts as realistic as possible (Slade, 1997; McCarthy, 2003). Activities should help students interact in contexts that are as authentic as possible (Silva Joyce & Slade, 2000). Students should be encouraged to analyze samples of authentic conversation to see how language is used to realize speech acts, such as requesting, inviting, and complimenting, appropriate to specific settings (Basturkmen, 2001; Crandall & Basturkmen, 2004). Students may first observe the basic patterns of exchange with their typical initiation, response, and follow-up structure or feedback. Then, they may use samples of natural data to discuss the discourse strategies and the grammatical structures of moves that help speakers expand, challenge, reformulate or summarize a talk (Burns, 2001; McCarthy, 2001; McCarthy & Walsh, 2003).